One of the participats meant e.g.: "I prefer Verdana for a variety of reasons, but the main one is its legibility. I feel very comfortable reading it. In comparison, reading Arial makes me feel cross-eyed, just because the letters are so tightly packed."

The request for Verdana is not mine alone; there is (was?) a thread about it. And it has nothing to do with browsers.

Just as a quick refresher. Arial is a bad copy of Helvetica, one of the most successful typefaces ever for printed texts. Unfortunately, none of them reads very well on screen, at 72 dpi instead of the 300 dpi that is normal in texts. Verdana, on the other hand, is one of the newer typefaces that were specifically designed for reading on screen. For aging eyes such as mine, Arial is difficult to read on screen, specially at the smaller (<12 pt) sizes. That´s why I deliberately wrote all my messages here in Verdana until we lost the ability to format text.

So the question is: if there are typefaces specifically designed for reading on screen, why use others that were designed for reading on paper and at much higher resolutions?

I really don't want to become confrontational, but I feel most of what you've said is wrong.

1. Arial is still being modernized. There are changes to it coming out in Windows 8. And calling it "bad" is just silly. I happen to think it looks very nice - one of the most readable screen fonts available.

2. Virtually all modern displays are nearer to 100 ppi, and the correct term is ppi (Pixels Per Inch), not dpi (Dots Per Inch). If yours is not up to displaying the default font here sharply or your aging eyes are simply having trouble seeing it at the size shown, perhaps you might want to investigate getting a new, sharper monitor or using the browser zoom feature as I have mentioned. Even calibrating the monitor and running through the ClearType Text Tuner can be very helpful.

3. Browser choice DOES, in fact, matter, because of new technologies coming out like subpixel font rendering that yield more accurate and fully-formed fonts on screen. Subpixel rendering is currently available in IE9 and Firefox 6, and I feel it makes fonts a lot more readable on screen. Viewing a font in any other browser yields positional inaccuracies and also in some cases character shape inaccuracies.

4. I personally find it irritating when people state things as fact that are opinion-based (example, "Unfortunately, none of them reads very well on screen"). Arial reads better for me on screen than Verdana. Therefore, you cannot make a blanket statement, even if 98% of the people in the world agree with you. It would be much nicer to say "many people feel..".

And don't feel bad - my eyes are aging as well. I have to get special computer glasses, optimized for focus at exactly the distance I sit from my monitors.

For some time I worked with in a technical standards committee. The texts were printed in accordance with the generally accepted rules of technology of the German Institute for Standardization e. V. ( Deutschen Instituts für Normung e. V) in Times Roman. The reasoning was "better readability because it is robust, clear and easy to read and uses place economically."

Under standard font experts this is controversial discussed naturally and therefore this standard is (in Germany) currently under revision. An agreement of the experts on the revision is not yet in sight.

certainly one can argue about this (or better not). I for my part, I always have problems with these general statements. What is true for you, it doesn't need to be true for other people. So let us give decision guidance to screen whether there are reall "two totally different kettles of fish".

Having printed many technical publications, my opinion is that sans serif fonts are easier to read even on print, but... I normally look at a computer screen all day and have for 35 years, so I may be biased.

Just a bit of reference information, which can serve to illustrate how DIFFERENT subpixel vs. pixel-aligned rendering actually look...

The text in this image on top is subpixel rendered in IE10 and the text below it is pixel-aligned. You really can't judge whether it looks good to you because you really need to tune the font smoothing for your particular display. Some may think the subpixel text looks more fuzzy or more color-fringed, others feel it's more fully-formed and the characters are spaced better.

Noel, I am not in the mood for reopening an already discussed matter. If I was careless in my writing and interchanged dpis and ppis, and said all when I should have said a majority or many, I apologize. I am presently out of town and using a very, very slow 3G prepaid connection that makes even posting this message a sacrifice.

If you find Arial easier to read than Verdana and even than Helvetica, and enjoy fiddling with your browser to make it look even nicer (and your second sample is easier to read than the original/default), that's your privilege. My point is that the normal user should not be forced to change anything to read comfortably the text in any site. Even less in one belonging to a firm producing such fine programs for the graphic arts. But I am too old and tired to continue this discussion, so the field is yours.

Just a final little experiment.

This is in Verdana: I, l.

This is the same in Arial: I, l. (And I think you'll have to take my word that I am not cheating).

...your second sample is easier to read than the original/default... ...the normal user should not be forced to change anything...

Well this abnormal user thinks that the first block is easier to read, and that the difference is at the very crux of our disagreement. Not everyone has the same equipment nor perceives the same things.

All that said, if the site had come up in Verdana I certainly wouldn't have complained. I don't find it difficult to read either.

I returned after the roll-out, and held my breath. So far, I have had few complaints, beyond some in the beta-forum, that probably just could not be implemented. I'll hold off a full "pass," until I have had time to use everything with synced servers. Right now, looking good.